Retail real estate has spent the last decade being written off, yet Whitney Livingston is preparing to walk onto GlobeSt.com's Women of Influence stage this summer with a very different story: this is a sector in a "resilience era" that is being reshaped by disciplined supply, AI-driven experimentation and a new generation of women determined to claim decision‑making seats.
A Resilience Era For Retail
As chief operating officer of ICSC, Livingston has a front-row view of how that is playing out on the ground. Across public REITs, private platforms and local operators, she recently said in a GlobeSt.com podcast that she is hearing a similar refrain: if a center is well located and well run, demand is there. Years of limited new construction, coming on the heels of a long period of overbuilding, have created a favorable imbalance between supply and demand in the right trade areas. That is supporting occupancy, rent growth and spreads for owners who are willing to reinvest in merchandising and operations rather than chase ground‑up development at today's cost of capital.
The categories driving that performance will be familiar to anyone tracking consumer behavior. Necessity retail, especially grocery-anchored and other open-air formats woven into weekly routines, continues to hold up.
At the same time, concepts tied to self-care—beauty, healthcare, wellness and fitness—are expanding as consumers say they plan to spend more in those areas. Discount and off-price chains are also leaning into this moment, with value-focused brands like Dollar Tree, Five Below and Ollie's in active expansion mode to capture shoppers who are still spending but more selective. Food and beverage runs through all of this; in the better centers, restaurants and specialty food have become the primary traffic and dwell-time engines, not just nice-to-have amenities.
Reinventing The Mall And The Mission
For legacy mall owners, that backdrop is colliding with a different reality: a large inventory of 1970s and 1980s vintage properties sitting on 60 to 90 acres of land that no longer match the four‑anchor, sea-of-parking template they were built around. Livingston sees those sites as opportunities rather than liabilities. With the right capital and entitlement strategy, they can be repositioned into mixed-use or otherwise more productive, community-serving real estate. The key, she argues, is to view the entire site as a canvas rather than swapping in one tenant at a time into a dated format.
A big piece of Livingston's message to GlobeSt.com's Women of Influence audience will be that clarity of mission now matters as much as location. Drawing on an ICSC–McKinsey study on "Shopping in the Age of AI," she points to a simple yet sharp framework: every physical asset must decide whether it is primarily about convenience or discovery.
In a world where AI agents handle more routine purchases, convenience sites win by being fast, easy and reliable—groceries, pharmacies, services, returns, pickup and quick dining. Discovery sites win by giving people a reason to show up and stay: new brands, strong restaurant offerings, events, experiences and high-touch services that make the visit feel worthwhile.
Proptech Grows Up
For retailers, that distinction shows up in the budget. A convenience mission calls for investment in technology, inventory accuracy, logistics and frictionless transactions. A discovery mission calls for spending on store design, service, programming and brand storytelling. Owners face a related, but slightly broader, challenge: they have to curate centers so the mix, access, parking, common areas, events and even music and scent are working together in support of a clear thesis. A well-positioned shopping center can succeed as both a convenience hub and a discovery destination, Livingston says, but only if it is programmed intentionally.
That emphasis on intentionality also runs through her take on AI and proptech. Roughly $17 billion went into proptech in 2025, and projections call for that figure to rise to about $35 billion annually by 2030. The experimentation phase is giving way to a more hard-nosed period where owners, operators and retailers want to see a direct link between a tool and leasing velocity, asset performance, operating costs, tenant engagement, or NOI.
Data and analytics platforms that can blend public and proprietary data to sharpen trade-area understanding and site selection are gaining traction. So are AI-enabled tools that help with lease and document review, facilities management or customer insights.
What is holding some portfolios back, in Livingston's view, is less the technology itself and more the plumbing behind it: fragmented systems, uneven data quality, cybersecurity concerns and a lack of clear internal processes for deciding where AI should fit.
That is one reason ICSC rolled out ICSC Plus Prop Tech at ICSC Las Vegas, designed to put tech founders in the same room as major owners and investors and push the conversation toward portfolio-wide deployment rather than one-off pilots. The aim is straightforward: technology that makes centers run better and perform better, not technology chased for its novelty.
Intentional Access For Women In CRE
If Livingston is focused on the mechanics of assets and tools, she is just as direct when the topic turns to people—specifically women in commercial real estate. She rejects the idea that the industry has a pipeline problem. The talent is there, she says; what is often missing is access: to the right relationships, to visibility, to real sponsorship, to capital and to stretch roles where women can prove themselves at scale.
ICSC is trying to close some of those gaps with a new initiative, ICSC Plus Women in CRE, also co-located with ICSC Las Vegas. The program brought together women from across the business with mentors, senior decision makers and peers for a full day of content, roundtables and networking. Livingston sees that as part of a broader responsibility. The same industry that is repurposing malls, experimenting with AI and leaning into proptech, she argues, cannot afford to be passive about who gets to make the calls.
For investors heading to GlobeSt.com's Women of Influence conference, being held in Denver in July, Livingston will not be selling a simple comeback story for retail. Instead, she is likely to make a more demanding case: this is a moment when disciplined supply, clearer asset missions, smarter technology adoption and more intentional leadership—especially around gender—are all intersecting. The owners and operators who embrace that reality, rather than wait it out, will be the ones shaping what "retail with a capital R" looks like in the next cycle.
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